Orange addiction physician recognised for more than 30 years of service

If you've got loved ones with addiction issues you'll know it's often a long, slow road to recovery with many stumbles and setbacks along the way.

Whether its cigarettes, poker machines or hard drugs, it can be heartbreaking and exhausting to watch someone struggle with their habit.

So it takes a special kind of person to work in this field, where you're seeing patient after patient, day after day, some of whom may never fully kick their addiction.

You'd be forgiven for thinking there aren't many rewards in this line of work but Dr Rod MacQueen, from the Lyndon Community, has just received significant recognition for his 30 plus years of service.

He's been added to the Honour Roll at the 2013 National Drug and Alcohol Awards and joined Mornings to discuss the accolade.

"I think it's good for rural people and rural health services to realise that even though a lot of drug and alcohol clinics and services are in Sydney and the big cities, actually out here we can do just as good a job or indeed perhaps better.

"What I think it says to me is that all those people who over the years have told me their stories, in perhaps the hope that I might be able to do something with their stories...it kind of says 'well, you've done okay, you've taken that story."

As Dr MacQueen explained, a lot of people assume that working in the field of drug and alcohol must be challenging but as he said, it's not for the reasons you think.

"Some would say, oh you're customers are so difficult...

"No, our customers come from all walks of life and they're all nice people, they have a perfectly legitimate need to have access to good quality healthcare services."

According to Dr MacQueen, the thing that wears him and most others in his line of work comes is the "huge indifference, shifting to downright antagonism" from some others.

"Politicians, other healthcare workers, people who should perhaps know better...shock jocks...

"...They wouldn't dream to tell us how to treat rheumatoid arthritis but they can pontificate about drug and alcohol services, this is what wears, I think, most of us down."

"I think if we had good evidence based health services in drug and alcohol, just like we do for most other aspects of healthcare, there would possibly be no need for awards and recognition and stuff because we'd say 'it's good enough that we get paid and I'm doing my job and I'm happy with that'."

Dr MacQueen said of all the feedback he gets and hears about the client group he works with, the hardest part is when people are blamed for things that have happened to them.

"It might be true that you could say a 25 or 30 year old person chooses to drink or chooses to drug but in many cases, the processes leading to that were put in train a long time before we would deem this person of an age where they have to take responsibility of their own actions.

"...an alarming number of women on methadone programs for example have experienced traumatic childhood abuse and sexual abuse. That's not the only pathway into heroin use but it certainly is one of the common ones."

Listening to people tell their story is something Dr MacQueen puts a lot of value in, it's also what he considers to be a driving force with his experience helping people.

"I guess the way many of us got working in this area is saying 'what would happen if we stopped blaming people for the vastitudes of life and started listening to their story'?

"Then when we listen to their story, A - we actually tend to be helping them...and B - we actually learn a lot."

"I'd say whatever capacities or capabilities I have for helping people today have largely come about from listening to other people tell their story, what's worked, what hasn't worked and then matching that up with the reading, research, literature and best evidence but in the end it's about people."

Hear Dr MacQueen discuss the mixed messages of society in dealing with drugs and alcohol, our understanding of addiction and their historical meanings and why addiction can sometimes overpower other priorities in life.